CFV: New OpenJDK Committer: Martin Balao

[Phil Race]

It might be time to update the process document to say something about this
to avoid these debates.

I (personal view) think the intent of a number like 8 is to ensure that 
a committer is,
well, .. committed ... as well as capable.
They've been around for a while, made contributions in that time and 
expect to
stick around, and you should take into account the time period, 
technical difficulty and
significance of their contributions rather than focusing on an absolute 
number.
8 is therefore a guideline based on some estimation of typical size + 
complexity of
fixes in the project to show a sufficient body of work.

-phil.

On 06/28/2018 09:28 AM, Andrew Hughes wrote:
> On 28 June 2018 at 07:42, Volker Simonis <volker.simonis at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi Andrew,
>>
>> I totally agree that we need more OpenJDK developers in the security
>> area and I'm sure Martin is a perfect fit for this role.
>>
>> But the process document [1] clearly states that a "Contributor should
>> make at least eight significant contributions to that Project before
>> being nominated". From the references you've provided I can only see
>> five changes contributed by Martin. I'd therefore like to kindly ask
>> you to withdraw this CFV and postpone it until Martin has reached at
>> least the required minimum number of contributions.
>>
>> Sorry for nit-picking, but I think we should all play by the same rules.
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Volker
>>
>> [1] http://openjdk.java.net/projects/#project-committer
>>
> Hi Volker,
>
> Thanks for bringing this up. I don't think it's nit-picking; we should all
> try and be on the same page when it comes to such things.
>
> I wasn't aware of the document you refer to. My only reference
> when writing the original e-mail, and others in the past, has been
> the bylaws [0], which have no such prescription. I tend to concur
> with what Mario and Andrew Dinn have already said so well, in that
> this is intended as guidance, rather than a strict rule.
>
> It is hard to interpret it as such without also defining "significant" in
> some absolute way. Generally, what is regard a significant patch
> by one person may not be by another. I can also easily see how
> someone could easily produce more than eight patches of low
> complexity in the time it may take them to produce one of a higher
> complexity.
>
> Moreover, I do not see the need for such strong barriers on making
> someone a committer. If we were considering the post of reviewer,
> I may be more stringent, but all we are offering is the ability to push
> approved patches to the repositories. Unless we believe Martin
> to be a rogue agent, I don't see a value in this. We are not suggesting
> that he should be able to freely push patches without approval.
> All delaying his approval as committer achieves is creating more
> tedious work for others, as they then have to repeat his work of applying
> and building the patch before pushing it on his behalf. I do think we
> need to keep practicality and accessibility in mind, as well as strict
> conformance to the rules.
>
> What prompted me to post this yesterday is I also opened a similar
> vote for Severin on 8u [1]. There, we have the even more bizarre situation
> that someone who can push to OpenJDK 9 and later can not push to
> OpenJDK 8, because, while such permissions are automatically carried
> to new versions of the JDK project, they are not applied retrospectively
> to older versions. This brought Martin to mind, and, to be fair to him, for
> his part, he rather modestly thought it was too soon to be proposed.
> Being aware of the work he has done, and is in the process of doing,
> I thought otherwise.
>
> It may well be that, by the time the two week voting period has expired,
> eight patches have been committed. My experience is that this has more
> to do with the availability of reviewers in the security space than anything
> else. If however, you still disagree and wish to veto, I bear you no hard
> feelings on the matter.
>
> [0] http://openjdk.java.net/bylaws#committer
> [1] http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/jdk8u-dev/2018-June/007588.html
>
> Thanks,